(HT) (1) Welcome

Hi everyone at Holy Trinity,

I am excited to working with you all and to have the opportunity to share some of my experiences while living as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala.

Now I certainly am not the most talented writer, in fact you could probably use my writings in English class for your grammar exercises. My hope, though, is that you are able to grasp even just a smidge of what life is like for others outside the US.

First before we start getting down to some of the deep stuff, I’ll explain a bit about me.

I am a Grand Rapids native and went to Sts. Peter and Paul. Back then, centuries ago, I even had the same principal that you have right now, Mrs. Kryger. After grade school I went to West Catholic and then Michigan State University. While at MSU, I studied physiology, a degree more commonly used to get into medical school. A year or more before graduating, I looked at all my options to decide what my next step would be. I prayed, talked them over with family and friends, and tried to listen to my heart. Through a long period of discernment, I realized I was most passionate about dedicating some time in my life to serve others who have not had the blessings I had had in my life. Thus, I joined the Peace Corps, an organization funded by the US Government that sends volunteers all over the world to countries who are asking for help. In late August I went to Guatemala, a country in Central America just below Mexico and began 2.5 months of training on things ranging from Guatemalan culture and Spanish to the work that I am doing right. I work in a program called Sustainable Agriculture and Nutrition. My work down here deals with working in rural community in the department of Jalapa (it’s like a state but they call them departments down here) trying to combat the malnutrition that is in the town. I moved to this town about 2.5 months ago (making my total stay here so far 5 months) and have used these past months to meet the people of the community, gain the confidence of them, and adjust to my new living environment.

So the technical goals of my project are to improve the nutrition of a designated number of families through teaching and sharing and motivating in how to raise a diversified vegetable garden, how to raise chickens, and how to get the most nutrients from the food and resources that they have available. The idea is to improve the family’s nutrition without having them spend more money and to teach them activities that are culturally acceptable and easy to understand and repeat so that they can continue to do these same activities long after my tour as a volunteer is done. A change such as that in anyone’s life is challenging to do; I only hope I start to improve some aspect of these people’s lives, the people with whom I am living and working side by side.

Besides my main reason for coming that I already mentioned, another goal of mine was to learn. I wanted (and still want) to learn about different cultures and what it was like to live outside the US in poverty. I wanted to learn another language and learn to see things from new perspectives. I wanted to learn from my fellow townspeople on things that are important to them in their lives and other knowledge that they wanted to pass to me. In a way even though I don’t have any tests or homework, school has not stopped for me; I am just in a different type of classroom.

I hope this help you all in understanding what I am doing. Feel free to read the last 5 months of posts on my blog to see what I have been doing. On the right of my posts is a huge list of words which represents a lot of the topics which I have written about. Also, to help you know which posts are specifically meant for you all, I'll put (HT) in the title and put the number in paretheses as well so that the posts can be kept in some kind of order.

Also, if you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear them and try to answer them. You can email them to me at joenaitis@gmail.com. It usually takes me about 2 weeks to reply since I have no internet access in my community.

Take care and hope you are all enjoying the cold!

Faith in Practice and Manure

Two weeks ago, I spent the entire week translating for US doctors who came to help people for 2 days in San Carlos Alzatate. I was only planning to help for 2 days, gut they needed help (in translating) so I stayed with them when they went to a nearby community in Jalapa.

I have to say I also stayed with them longer because I was having fun. I worked in just about every “department” they had except the OBGYN unit. For the dentists, I helped tell where the pain was and how many teeth they wanted pulled. Just in 1 day, 1 of the 3 dentists pulled alone 107 teeth! Sadly teeth hygiene and care is really poor here. All the junk food from the places like the US came, but the good habits for teeth did not. The teeth they pulled were all cracked with some teeth only having a root remaining in the gums. The rest of the “good” teeth were spared. It was quite interesting to see from many such a different perception on teeth. For many of these people, adult teeth were something that you had and you lose, just like your baby teeth. Thus, there were no qualms about getting front teeth or canines or whatever out.

Seeing all the teeth pulled and the litocain injections done in front of me for a day was definitely not my choice thing to do, but I was able to calm my nerves after a bit and learn a lot about dentistry through my thousands of questions I asked the dentists.

In the pharmacy, I filled orders for the patients and then explained to them how to take the prescription. Unfortunately for me, I will be known by the pharmacy staff as the person who cleared the pharmacy area with just one fart. I blame the doctors for feeding me 3 meals with all kinds of American junk food. The good news, though, that after that occurrence, my stomach felt a lot better.

I also translated for a pediatrician and general medical doctor relaying the patient-doctor conversation. This was certainly the most challenging part, not only because it required all the knowledge of Spanish I had, but because I listened to and saw all the heath problems that the people were having. Sometimes we were only able to treat symptoms giving temporary relief, but among the 1700 people that came through, the group found 110 people who needed surgery (something serious like having a hernia or needing a reconstruction of the penis and urinary tract so that urine did not leak out) and referred them to Antigua where surgeons will come to perform the surgeries.

That weekend was the official welcome party for al the volunteers of the Oriente (the east of Guatemala) who came in the fall. It was a chance for all the newbies to meet everyone in the area. Part of the activity included hiking a volcano whose top had sunken to form a lake. The lake was beautiful and cold… Maybe I’ll be able to get some pictures from a friend to post later on.

While hiking I had something very fortunate and fortunate happen to me in the same instance.

When we started our hike, we began going up a road and were playing catch with a football. Apparently at some point from the start, my necklace broke and it with my 2 medals of St. Joseph and Mary dropped to the ground. I hiked up and went swimming without even noticing something was missing. On the way back down when we were almost to the end where we’d catch the bus, I wandered to the other side of the road and soon spotted something shiny. I picked it up and found it was my St. Joseph medal. Not much later, someone else found my St. Mary medal. We never found the chain, but I did not leave sad; the medas which are gifts from past teachers, were the most valuable things. To not realize that I had lost my medals and to still encounter them by chance 5 hours later on a walked path by many, to me, is more than just luck.

Finally, this past week I spent constructing my compost pile as a model for the women’s group with which I am working. I gathered all kinds of leaves of certain nutrient-filled plants and gathered sacks of manure. Just picture me with a machete and baseball cap carrying corn sacks of this stuff through coffee fields and dusty paths and roads. As they say down here, I earned my tortillas and beans that night.





Here are some links of pictures and a log that the doctors from Faith in Practice put on the website. The first 2 are links directly to pictures of yours truly, but you should be able to browse them all. The third is the log that someone wrote of the 4 days that they were here. Below the links are some pictures that were emailed to me from a doctor.



http://www.faithinpractice.org/gallery.php?page=7&trip=169


http://www.faithinpractice.org/gallery.php?page=10&trip=169


http://www.faithinpractice.org/triplog.php?tripid=169&view=View

Here is a picture of me, with a current and past volunteer of the Peace Corps, on the bus to the place where we would be helping that day. I know I have said this before, but as you can see, the buses are old US school buses. These buses are part of the reason why pollution is so bad in the capital; Guatemala receives all the old buses that run inefficiently and that are not permitted to be used in the states.
Here's a good picture of a kid we helped and his mom. The kid can't walk (his mother carries him like he is right now in the blanket wrapped around the mother) nor talk and has daily seizures but just one look at his face and it just makes you want to smile right with him.

Here are some of the Guatemalan volunteers that helped too. The one in the center is quite the inspiring person. After being helped by this same organization in removing a huge tumor from behind his nasal region, he has spent the past 5 years getting trained to look for people who might need surgery as well as actually organized the trip to San Carlos and the other community.

Here are 2 kids from the other community that we worked in. There, as you can tell by how the kids are dressed, it is quite cool at times during the day and cold at night because the place is so high up in the mountains.